Hitachi Maxell is turning itself into an external hard drive supplier with a GEN branded line of products.
Maxell is best known for supplying batteries and storage media. It's now extending its brand to cover USB-connected hard drives for the SOHO and consumer markets. The loss-making Maxell company was a partially-owned …

I remember...

...the adverts where the tapes were promoted by a skeleton from the mature generation. They were among the worst audio tapes I'd ever used. The last thing I want is for my data to go the way of their mascot.

same

but with their CD's. Worst ones I've used. The sheer amount of coasters that were burnt was ludicrous, I had better results with the 10 cent bulk CD's than maxell's(they were around $1 a disk at the time). Also had to chuck the rest of the Maxells that did burn right after 3 years seeing the data started getting corrupt and put them on new cd's.

it's a shame really

Their videos were alright, and in the early days (welll.... I mean early 2000s anyway) their CDRs were about the most reliable I could find.

Unfortunately at some point some bean counter decided to go for a cheaper wholesale supplier and they all become crap :( ..... and giving them a second chance recently, their DVDRs turned out to be a pile of rubbish too. Some didn't even burn successfully and about 70% proved to have errors in post-burn tests that meant I either had to re-burn some files or bin the entire disk. I tried all speeds from 4 thru 16x after first noticing, too, and in a couple of usually reliable drives.

I can agree with the audio tapes too - I think a bright orange Maxell that a friend gave me in school is about the worst cassette in my collection, even when I tried to re-record the contents after liking the muffed versions enough to buy the CDs... and this collection includes copies of Monty Python LPs that my dad made on cheap-as-chips secondhand tapes in the late 70s.

Let's hope that the Hitachi side of the business shows through more in the disks than the Maxell one.